


here, in the real world

by spheeris1



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/F, Love, Post-Series, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spheeris1/pseuds/spheeris1
Summary: one-shot // Anthy and her thoughts about her life with Utena and with herself





	here, in the real world

///

Magic doesn't exist in this world.

Well, maybe it does, but only in small ways. Easily accessible to anyone, but rarely impressive enough to catch one's eye. It could appear in the form of a coincidence or perhaps even reach out in the guise of a strangely prophetic dream. But no one calls it magic, not in this world.

Not in the real world.

///

Anthy wanted to get as far away from all that she knew and all that she did and all that she was. And maybe this isn't it – not totally, not completely – but it is enough. For now.

Her shoes are covered in a grimy mix of dust and dirt. The grooves upon her fingers carry tiny rivers of black oil, stickier than tar. She tinkers and twists and doesn't smile too much and still...

...oh, people still trip over their feet when they see her. Is that magic at work? Can she never wipe its surreal sheen off of her face?

Or is it as simple as Utena states in-between bites of their leftover dinner from the night before: “Maybe they just think you're the hottest mechanic they have ever seen.”

///

_(Seven days out and she was bewildered. Blown over by the loudness of it all. No, not loud like swords, but a deafening symphony nonetheless. Soon, though, she got used to it. She could pick out the crickets from the chattering voices, she could catch the wind beyond the car horns, she could hear the ocean – the real ocean, the one she nearly forgot all about – chasing down her senses from behind a million other noises._

_And then she set to looking for Utena._

_Utena says that she was looking, too, but it was just undercover. Anthy knows the truth. Utena didn't remember a goddamn thing until Anthy was standing right in front of her face. And then Anthy watched, eyes wide and lips still stupidly smiling, as Utena fainted.)_

///

“I don't care where we go. I can get a job anywhere, I'm good at that.”  
“I know.”  
“Soooo.... where are we going?”

No one has globes anymore, people are always online and Wiki-this and Wiki-that, but Anthy still has an affinity for antiquated things. She searches high and low and finally finds one, sits it by the window that stares out of Utena's cramped apartment and spins it round and round and round.

“Utena.”  
“Hmm?”  
“Tell me where I land.”

Fingertip like a dart, piercing and blind, and who knows how many places she flew over before she landed. But land she did and Anthy thinks she can hear Utena thinking, just a little bit, just like so very long ago – goodness knows, the lionhearted have the busiest minds...

“Arizona.”  
“Excellent.”

///

_(They did things backwards. Then again, that's a bad habit for them. Starting with the ending and then rambling their way back to the beginning. They didn't talk when they should have, they didn't deal with some things like they could have._

_They just gaped at one another as the seconds ticked on by._

_And then they were all over each other, barely registering anyone or anything else around them. Stumbling up stairs and crashing through doors. Falling onto the floor and falling into one another._

_A glorious mess of scars and desires._

_Oh, yes, they didn't talk about anything for a good, long while.)_

///

“A hot house flower.”

That's what Utena calls her as she strides from the bedroom to the back porch, naked and unashamed, and it can be their little joke. They can joke about some things now, here in the real world.

Anthy hates to wear clothes. Everything is a costume somehow and so she strips down the moment she gets home again. And she lays out in the sun, sometimes with her eyes open – watching the breeze pick up the desert and toss it about, nodding silently to lizards that scurry and stop – and sometimes she closes her eyes, feels the heat as it sinks beneath her skin, and if she turns just the right way...

...oh, she can still catch the scent of rose petals rising up from her body.

Is this magic? Or is she just imagining it? Are flowers trapped within her marrow, budding but with nowhere to bloom? Or is it just a memory, lodged in her system for the rest of her days?

///

There are times when Anthy is amazed at the depth and breadth of her emotions.

There are times when she cannot stop from slamming a drawer or storming out of a room, all fire and fury. There are times when she laughs until her stomach aches or cries until she is too tired to even blink.

There are times when Anthy feels so much that it hurts, feelings knocking her over and pinning her down, heavy as a wet blanket. She sulks, she screams, she is silly one minute and maudlin the next.

There are times when Anthy looks at all the people here in the real world and wonders how they have survived this long with so much going on underneath the surface.

///

_(A woman touches Utena's arm, in jest but for far too long, and Anthy is jealous. And Anthy hates that she is jealous. And so they yell about it in the parking lot, Utena full of frustration and Anthy bubbling over with all that has not changed._

_Possessiveness hitting up against love... love as dark as it is bright..._

_“Don't you trust me?”  
“Yes.”_

_A hiss instead of a conclusion and they don't talk for the rest of the evening.)_

///

Utena runs up and down this green field, shouting and encouraging, grinning wildly when one of her players scores a goal. The parents love Utena, patting her on the back and shaking her by the shoulders, heaping praise onto her sheepish body. Eager, too, but still beautifully sheepish.

And the children are young, young enough to still find enchantment anywhere and everywhere, and they scramble up to Utena in delight. Utena picks one of them up, a girl giggling, and Utena waves the little girl's hand in Anthy's direction.

Utena shines like a beacon, a lighthouse that calls to all ships passing by, and Anthy wonders...

...are you made of magic, Utena? Made up of spells weaved and incantations spoken? Anthy wonders if she is the only one who knows what Utena truly is...

Or is she just being fanciful once again?

///

Anthy still doesn't like crowds.

She can handle them, of course, but a part of her mind will continue to retreat. Utena knows all about this, stays close if she can, but Anthy doesn't like to be coddled.

Anthy prefers being understood. Utena knows all about this, too.

Utena has learned when to let Anthy be and when to pry, when to wrap Anthy up in her arms and when to set Anthy free. Anthy reminds herself that this is a two-way street, this constant learning, this ever-expanding understanding – she has learned when to ask, when to listen, when to hold, when to move along.

And maybe this is a type of magic as well. Maybe growing together – older, wiser, better – is as fantastical and as improbable as a castle in the sky.

///

_(They try therapy. But how can you tell the truth to anyone when no one could ever believe you?_

_Utena buys books, useless in the end since Utena cannot stay still long enough to read more than two chapters. Anthy takes a quiz on Facebook and rolls her eyes at the result._

_“Yes, I know I am an old soul with a sensitive nature. Tell me something I do not know.”_

_They screw things up, a few times over. Utena gets all sullen and Anthy aches to fix or to flee, she isn't really sure._

_They try and they try and they try. Just like always. Stretching out to grasp onto each other and fearing how often they will fall short.)_

///

Anthy cannot help herself sometimes, grappling with Utena's arms and legs like they are wrestling instead of seducing, but the wicked smile she earns with this fake battle is worth the tussling.

Utena still likes a bit of a fight. Anthy still likes a bit of a challenge.

It doesn't make the kisses any sweeter. It doesn't make the love any stronger. It just is what it is and they are good with that these days. Oh, they can be tender, too; achingly tender with one another, soft but sure as their hips meet, moans traded like whispers, like delicious secrets.

But tonight is a genuine roll in the sheets, chuckling mixed in with finer points, with sharper points, and Anthy revels in the sensation of Utena's flesh between her teeth, in the growl that comes to life beneath Utena's chest. They give and they take, sips of control and of consummation simultaneously, and by the time Anthy feels that electricity running from head to toe, by the time Anthy's body is stretched and taut like a wire...

...oh yes, by the time Anthy comes, she definitely believes that there is magic in the real world.

///

“Marry me.”

Utena is nothing if not impulsive. And really rather horrible at romantic gestures. Then again, what's more romantic than risking everything – your heart, your soul, your life – for another person?

Anthy rolls her eyes at herself. Because that's just movie talk, just a useless fairy-tale, just a mirage.

Real love in the real world, oh that's something else entirely. Fiction rarely gets it right, always too content to be that first kiss instead of all the work that follows. Real love, the dirty and dismal kind, the sweaty and stupid kind, the kind that lasts beyond lies and betrayal, beyond truths and destruction – oh that really is something else completely.

“Yes? No? Maybe...?”

Of course, it is yes. How could it be anything else? There's no one else in the universe, in this vast and insane existence, that Anthy wants to love like this. Like a partner. Like a friend. Like a woman. Like forever and ever, until the end of time.

Anthy can't help but laugh at herself. Because this is the stuff of legend, this is the making of miracles and the shape of eternity – oh, this is something else entirely, isn't it?

“You're made of magic, Utena, did you know that?”

Utena smiles at her, a slow upturn of those lips that Anthy knows so very well, and raises her eyebrows in silent question. 

“But no rings. I think we've moved past that kind of thing by now, don't you?”

And now Utena's smile is fuller, broader, as deep and as wide as the heavens and Anthy feels her heart skip a beat at the sight.

“Anthy...”  
“Hmm?”  
“I still want to hear you say it.”

Utena is nothing if not determined. But one has to be that way in the real world, to demand and expect better, to know that you deserve nothing less than that. 

To know that if you ask a question, you deserve a very real answer...

///

_(It isn't always easy, this whole being yourself thing. This whole being yourself in the real world thing._

_Anthy misplaced it, then she worked to forget it ever was a thing she could be. She did that for so long that even when she broke free, she wasn't fully free. Old habits die hard and all that._

_It hasn't always been easy between her and Utena. Not in the beginning, certainly, but not in this new world either. Anthy likes the term 'learning curve'; it suggests that just because you can't go directly to your destination doesn't mean that you won't get there. Eventually._

_They have taken the long way. The long, long way, true, but they'll get there. Eventually._

_Because they are nothing if not dedicated, they are nothing if not strong, they are nothing if not willing and so very able._

_They are Anthy and Utena, after all._

_They are made of magic.)_

///

...and Anthy is nothing if not very real these days.

“Yes.”

///

**e n d**

**Author's Note:**

> I had the great fortune to share SKU with my girlfriend and my only hope was that she wouldn't dislike it completely. She ended up loving it. And the more we talked about the series, the more I realized that SKU is probably my favorite series of all time - of all the series and shows I have watched and loved. And so I needed to write this. 
> 
> Thanks to 'Desert Raven' by Jonathan Wilson & 'Turn Me Around' by Half Waif


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